Cryptids and credulity

 

Credit: Martin Walsh, "The Zanzibar Leopard" blog

"Cryptids and credulity: the Zanzibar leopard and other imaginary beings" is an article by Martin Walsh and Helle Goldman, published in "Anthropology and Cryptozoology: Exploring Encounters with Mysterious Creatures" (dated 2017). I haven´t read the entire volume, in fact, I didn´t even know that cryptozoology had attracted the interest of mainstream scholars. Walsh and Goldman are skeptics, and regard cryptozoology as a rather naïve pseudo-science, a quixotic quest for animals that aren´t merely undescribed, but above all *unrecognized* by science (i.e. they might not even exist). In the opinion of the authors, cryptozoologists cherry-pick factoids from a broader context which may be better understood anthropologically. If a cryptid fits hand and glove in, say, a context of belief in witchcraft or ghostly beings, chances are that we´re dealing with an imaginary being from folklore, rather than an undescribed flesh-and-blood animal. This is doubly true of alleged ETs and other beings that sound too fantastic to be true. 

"Cryptids and credulity" is really a longer version of another text by Walsh and Goldman, "Chasing imaginary leopards" (first published in 2012). The two authors have spent considerable time at Unguja (Zanzibar Island), the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago off the East African coast. Zanzibar is controlled by Tanzania. Their mission was to investigate alleged sightings of the Zanzibar leopard, a very real subspecies of the leopard. During the 1990´s, Western NGOs and conservationists became interested in the plight of this big cat, which had been hunted and killed by the natives with the tacit support of the local and national governments. Walsh, Goldman and other researchers assumed that the Zanzibar leopard was still extant, and local informants (including hunters) readily shared their stories with the foreigners. However, further research strongly suggested that the leopard had been hunted to extinction or at the very least to extreme rarity. Yet, people at Unguja saw them all the time! Very often, they claimed that a substantial portion of the leopards were kept by witches...

It turns out that belief in "kept leopards" is part and parcel of a complex lore centered on the realities of witches and witchcraft. The witches are said to own the leopards and control them through supernatural means, for instance by offering them enchanted food. Some leopards belong to witches´ guilds, but most are individually owned. The leopards are seen coming and going into certain houses. Both the cats and their keepers can be countered by powerful curses, but the witches have developed counter-curses and defenses of various kinds. The witches use the leopards to terrorize the general population, in a worst case scenario by letting the cats attack and eat people who fell afoul of the witch. Needless to say, there is zero evidence that kept leopards exist. It´s interesting to note that leopard-like spirits also play a role in the local folklore, perhaps suggesting that the boundary between paranormal entities and flesh-and-blood animals isn´t entirely clear. 

To Walsh and Goldman, we are thus dealing with culturally constructed narratives about imaginary beings controlled by other imaginary beings. While the Zanzibar leopard is (or rather was) a real animal, it also played a prominent part in folklore, so prominent that the lore still exists, despite the original animal being extinct! My impression is that the association between the leopard and witchcraft was one reason why people hunted and killed them. If so, it´s richly ironic that the belief in the evil powers of the big cat has survived the beast itself. (It´s almost a bit magical, so to speak.) The authors believe that the incomprehension of native folklore is the main reason why both Western and Tanzanian researchers constantly take the stories of kept leopards at face value, and go on virtual "kept leopard chases", always without finding anything tangible. The cryptid only exist in the imagination of the credulous cryptozoologist. 

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Cryptids and credulity